Hi James! It seems like now that the quality over quantity will win, it's the best time to hop on the Google Authorship Markup enabling feature to get ready for the time that the Author Rank ranking factor is applied. I have shared the way in which it worked for me after trying out the other 2 methods of verifying (3 way link and email verification) - http://www.slideshare.net/websitemarketingtips/google-authorship-markup-how-to-enable-it.

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Solution...Imagine a system that instead of ranking content on a pagelevel, breaks those pages down and looks at smallercontent items on those pages, which it associates withdigital signatures. Content creators could be givenreputation scores, which could influence the rankings ofpages where their content appears, or which they own,edit, or endorse. Bill Slawski http://searchengineland.com/googles-agent-rank-patent-application-10487 Search Engine Land (2007)

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What does it do? It makes your face appear on SERPs – thus higher CTR? http://www.seobodybuilder.com/marketin g-conversion/click-through-rate-increased- with-rel-author - MEH!? Also works on Google news.http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/tools/serp-turkey/ Does not effect ranking!